I was not planning to run a marathon this year.

Then Tour des Termes, the running club attached to the Saint-Estèphe estate of the same name, asked whether I wanted to come and run the Marathon du Médoc with them. There is only one honest answer to that question.

I had been hearing about this race for years, always from people wearing the same slightly unfocused expression while they described it. It has a reputation for being completely mad. I wanted to see it for myself. I still turned up and found it madder than advertised.

It was probably the best marathon of my life. It was definitely the longest.

The back of a purple Tour des Termes Athlétique Club running shirt in the crowd at the start, printed with the club's tower logo and the years 1986 and 2026

The setup

Officially this is the Marathon des Châteaux du Médoc. The 2026 running was the fortieth edition, on Saturday 5 September, and the theme was années 80: disco, neon, and about a decade of pop culture compressed into one road through the vines. Every edition gets a theme, and the field takes the theme extremely seriously, which I will come back to.

Julien and the club put me up at the estate, ten minutes from both the start and the finish. If you ever get offered this race by a club with a house nearby, say yes on that detail alone. Not queueing for a shuttle bus at seven in the morning is worth a good fifteen minutes of finishing time in pure morale.

Bibs go out the day before, in a sports hall, at desks sorted by bib number. Mine was 7416, which tells you most of what you need to know about the size of this thing.

A race bib reading 7416, Antoine Desferet, 40th Marathon des Châteaux du Médoc, années 80's, Saturday 5 September 2026, held in front of a Tour des Termes poster reading Allez la team

Runners collecting their bibs the day before the race in a sports hall, at a long row of desks staffed by volunteers in green marathon t-shirts, with pink signs overhead marking each bib number range

Then you sleep badly, get up, put on a costume, and walk to the start.

Antoine in a purple Tour des Termes running vest with bib 7416, a purple headband and an orange club cap, standing next to a mantelpiece lined with Château Tour des Termes bottles

Everybody is in costume, and it changes everything

Dressing up here is not a minority doing a bit for the photos. It is the whole field. Eight thousand people in neon headbands, shell suits, wigs and sunglasses, packed into one street under a cloud of pink smoke, with a band and a troupe of aerialists hanging off a crane above the start arch.

The start pen packed with runners in 1980s neon costumes, headbands and visors, with balloons overhead and a crane holding a suspended stage above the street

A stage suspended from a crane above the start line, with a band and dancers in 80s outfits waving from the platform and three aerialists performing on hoops below it

Naturally, some people over-delivered. And then ran faster than me, which I found genuinely difficult to accept. Getting passed by Jean-Claude Dusse in full ski gear, boots included, does something to a man. If that name means nothing to you, he is the permanently unlucky skier from a comedy that every French household can quote line for line. Getting passed shortly afterwards by Indiana Jones does not help.

A dense crowd of runners at the start in 1980s costume: neon headbands, a shirt printed with cassettes and disco balls, a giant blonde wig, and one runner carrying a water ski over his shoulder

My favourites: three guys running as a TGV, one carriage each, on their heads. Jean-Claude Dusse in the ski outfit. And the disco balls, which were everywhere.

Here is the part that surprised me, though. Because everyone is dressed up, nobody is dressed up. There is no self-consciousness anywhere on the course, no separation between the serious runners and the people having fun, because there is no visible difference between them. You are all in the same ridiculous group with the same spirit, and it makes conversation with total strangers completely effortless for five hours. I have never talked to so many people during a race.

There is a tasting every two kilometres, and that is a trap

I stayed reasonable on the number of glasses. I still tasted a lot.

It takes a genuine force of character not to accept every single pour, because the people behind the tables are not doing marketing. They are pleased. They have opened their wine, they are standing in their own courtyard on a Saturday, and they want you to try it. Saying no to that, over and over, for hours, is harder than the hills.

From the eighth kilometre to the finish there is a stop roughly every two kilometres. That number matters more than it sounds. In most marathons the aid stations are five to seven kilometres apart, so when you fall apart at thirty you can run five kilometres alone in your own head, seeing nobody, convinced you will never finish. Here that gap does not exist. Every two kilometres something happens: music, a courtyard, a table, a queue of people cheering. It is a completely different psychological race. Occasionally a dangerous one, because the temptation is to stay.

A runner seen from behind on a gravel path through the vines, wearing an orange Tour des Termes cap and a hydration vest with a bottle of red wine in the back pocket, pointing at it with his thumb

And then the last five kilometres, which are the best five kilometres in road running and it is not close. Oysters. Ribeye. Cheese. Ice cream. Finish line. In that order.

You get to walk into châteaux you have never seen

I have recorded more than 120 podcast episodes at this point and travelled to a lot of wine regions, and Bordeaux still holds a particular place for me. Even so, there were Médoc estates I had simply never set foot in.

This race walked me through several of them in one morning. Beychevelle. Ducru-Beaucaillou. Lafon-Rochet. Pontet-Canet, which was absolutely beautiful and was probably my favourite stop of the day. Lafite, which was another wonderful one, arriving just before the climb up to Cos.

Even Phélan Ségur, where I had interviewed Véronique Dausse but had never actually visited. The atmosphere there was one of the warmest on the course, and the place is lovely.

A line of Château Tour des Termes bottles from Saint-Estèphe, reds and whites including the Explore range, arranged along a table in front of a large photograph of Cabernet grapes on the vine

If you love wine, this is paradise, and it is paradise for a specific reason: the door is open and nobody is selling. You are not booking a tasting slot, you are not being walked through a commercial pitch, you are jogging into the courtyard of a classed growth in fancy dress and someone is handing you a glass. If you want to know what the classification on those gates actually means, we have a full guide to the Bordeaux classifications, but on the day it means very little. Everybody pours.

It is harder than it looks

Now the honest part, because the photos make this look like a street party with an incidental 42 kilometres attached.

The route is genuinely beautiful and genuinely hard. There are hilly, steep sections that you do not see coming from the profile, and there are stretches on dirt rather than road, which break your legs in a way tarmac does not. The weather was kind until midday and then the sun came out properly and stayed out.

The last five kilometres are on one very long straight. You can see where you are going for a very long time before you get there, which is exactly the wrong thing to be able to see with five kilometres to go.

I took this marathon a little lightly. I am in decent shape, there is wine every two kilometres, how bad can it be. I am writing this a few days later and I am still recovering.

Five hours, 981st, and not one regret

I have run two marathons before this one. The pleasure I got out of the Médoc is not in the same category.

When you run a normal marathon you are locked onto your pace, your splits, your target. You are serious. You want to beat a time, or a friend, or both. It is a good feeling and it is not this feeling. If the Marathon du Médoc is your first marathon, it will set a benchmark for enjoyment that the rest of the sport is going to struggle to match.

Here I just wanted to get the most out of the day. I finished in five hours, 981st out of roughly 8,000, so the day was not a complete write-off on the sporting side either.

A finish-line selfie: Antoine smiling in a purple vest and headband with round blue sunglasses pushed up, holding the pink 40th Marathon des Châteaux du Médoc finisher medal on its ribbon

One more thing worth knowing. If you win this race, you receive your own weight in Médoc wine. Which means the Marathon du Médoc is, as far as I can tell, the only sport on earth where getting fit and building a wine cellar are the same project.

A goal for next year, maybe.

Thank you

The Tour des Termes team at the start, seen from behind in orange, purple and white club shirts and matching orange caps, one of them carrying an inflatable boombox

To Julien and Tour des Termes, for the invitation and for putting me up at the estate, ten minutes from the start and the finish.

To Grégoire, for the pace and the company.

To the whole Tour des Termes team, for the spirit from the first kilometre to the last.

To the Marathon du Médoc staff and to every participating château, for the organisation, the smiles, the help and the glasses.

And to all eight thousand of you, for being funny and kind for five straight hours.

See you next year. Probably in a worse costume.